My Camino Day 8/4 2021

My Camino Day 8/4 2021 was a long time in arriving. Dreams of it began before My Camino Day August 18, 2018 came to an end, but my hopes for 2019 and 2020 were not to be. I tell that tale in My Camino Day the lost years. Next, our grand plan that would give me a two month adventure in Spain with our younger son and his younger son, a return to el Camino de Santiago del Norte, !THE FIESTA!, and a joint vacation with our Spanish friends fell apart. That story is covered in my My Camino Day getting there in 2021 post.

Yet here I was in Zumaia.

By August 3rd 2021 the confidence that I felt after My Camino Day 8/4 2018 had started to wane a bit with added age, more information that showed clearly that my “hiking from a home base” approach of 2018 had simplified a lot of things, and that COVID restrictions were likely to make things significantly harder.

And there was my backpack. It now weighed in at 7 or 8 kilograms (15 to 18 pounds), significantly more than in 2018. This had affected my planning quite a lot. Test hikes near home showed that I could count on doing 8 to 12 kilometers (5 to 8 miles) in a day, so days 16 kilometers (10 miles) as had been the case on August 3rd 2018 were not part of my plan. That meant at least one night would require camping alongside The Way between Markina-Xemein and Gernika since the distance between them is over 25 kilometers (15 miles).

Even with the expectation that I would sleep out of doors on the night of August 5-6, there was an intimidation factor from not knowing where I would sleep the night of August 4-5. From texts I sent to my wife (Janis or, for me, Jan), “I’m going to check on hotels in Deba, too. The email address on the site I was counting on bounced … The Camino route is 8 km to Deba … About 2 hours“. That two hour estimate was wrong for two reasons that I would learn the next day: it was really 12 kilometers and climbing the expected but underestimated hills would slow my pace a bit more than I bargained for.

A bit later, the possibility that I would spend the night of August 4-5 sleeping in my extensively patched Gatewood Cape pitched as a tent was becoming all the more likely. Memory plays tricks, but I covered the situation and my state of mind in another text. “I am starting to hate Airbnb. I thought I had a place in Deba, but they switched the search area to San Sebastian [actually by its Basque name of Donostia] and I made a reservation that’s of no value. Almost instant cancellation but no refund. And no places where I’m looking. No luck finding something I can reserve, either“.

Those texts were the beginning of a Camino partnership with my wonderful wife. While she has no desire to sample the Camino herself, she is delighted to use her skills with modern communications, her computer, and the Internet to provide me with a lot of help in my Camino Journey. That help has been a major contributor to my success and comfort hiking the Camino.

The Beginning

When I left the Airbnb in Zumaia and began climbing the hill to follow el Camino toward Deba, light rain was falling and I was wearing that same, creatively patched Gatewood Cape, the one that was likely to serve as my home for the night, as rain gear. That’s the door to Juan Luis’ Airbnb in the background of the picture on the left. Juan Luis had been a terrific host and I had needed every minute of my time with him to finish shaking off the jetlag.

By the time I left his place that morning, well, “doubts? I had a few,” to paraphrase Frank Sinatra. The rain was a minor irritation, but the presence of thunder as I began to make my way out of town on the Camino route was a real concern.

Perhaps ten minutes later, with the rain still falling and the thunder very much in evidence, all of the obstacles and disappointments that had been in my path, my growing awareness of how little I knew about camping along the Camino route, and the low likelihood of getting any rest sleeping under my Gatewood Cape on a rainy night combined to seem like omens as I continued to climb the first of the hills between Zumaia and Deba.

The Middle

The sky began to lighten shortly after I set out and by the time I had been on my way to Deba for a half hour or so, I was treated to a wonderful view of Zumaia as I describe in this very brief video.

As the weather continued to improve, the magic of the Camino’s sights and sounds and smells returned. There was a shepherd leading his flock with his dog doing all that was necessary to help. Then I came to something new, in both senses of the term: a gate that allowed pilgrims to pass using a stairway rather than opening the large gate or using a smaller one located to one side.

The weather was continuing to improve. The rain had stopped and there was no more thunder, both of which were very welcome developments, indeed. The wind, while reduced, was still present. That wind, and the change in the Camino path from a paved road to a narrow dirt track with thorns on both sides threatened even more damage to my Gatewood Cape than our cat, Molly, had done, so the Cape went into its pouch.

Only a bit after that, there was one of those “el Camino del Norte” views that show this spectacular countryside at its very best and make it oh so clear why this particular Camino route is considered a bit more difficult than many others. The mountains come together in an irregular landscape that has very few flat sections of any size, trails and roads climb and descend or follow serpentine paths or, often, both. Only a few kilometers later, I was treated to another of the many outstanding views one has of the Bay of Biscay as the del Norte route hugs Spain’s northern coastline.

The day had already been a challenge. After hiking 12 kilometers (about 7.5 miles) I reached Deba (the 8 kilometers I had expected was wrong) and there had been no place to stay nor any place that seemed likely to camp along the way (I would not receive Eddy’s advice to pitch my tent in churchyards until much later in 2021). While there were no accommodations available in Deba, there was food to be had. As is the norm in Spain, and especially in el Pais Vasco (the Basque Country), an excellent light lunch was extremely easy to find.

Lacking any other idea, I pressed on hoping to find someplace to sleep indoors but now entirely at peace with the idea of spending the night sleeping somewhere along The Way using my ultralight Gatewood Cape and Gossimar Gear GVP Ultralight Stove System (my stove is an older model, it has a titanium cup rather than the Foster’s can, that I’ve rarely used but am happy to have). That level of comfort comes through pretty clearly in this short video.

The End

My next (only?) hope for sleeping indoors came from Jan’s Internet searches for places to stay. She texted “… does look like the markings along the way are good. That albergue has a website. Says RESERVATIONS ONLY BY PHONE AND WHATSAPP …“. We were not yet fully functional with the complexities of international dialing (it can be weird when one is using a United States based phone to call Spain from Spain), which took some getting used to for both of us. Our Camino partnership was still in its infancy as well, so it was left to me to press on, hopeful, but without a reservation.

The morning had become midday and midday had become afternoon. My ability to reconstruct that afternoon is hampered by having taken few photographs and only one video after leaving Deba plus Google Timeline having deleted the path my phone followed as part of a privacy change. Memory plays tricks, but mine says I was tiring and becoming a bit – my memory fails me a bit here – Tired? Discouraged? – after perhaps 15 kilometers (10 miles or so) of hiking. It mattered not.

Perhaps 4 or 5 kilometers (a bit less than 3 miles) after leaving Deba, I came upon the Izarbide hostel that Jan had been referencing in her text. The hostel is in the area of the somewhat amateurish red circle on the map to the right.

It seemed a likely place and, across the road from it, there was a meadow that looked like it might be a good place to pitch my tent if an indoor space was not available.

It not only looked like a good idea, it was, really, my only idea.

I went in and was greeted by a friendly woman who spoke good English. Memory plays tricks, but mine is very clear on my disappointment when she explained how the Spanish government’s COVID restrictions, which Julian had warned me about repeatedly and I had already experienced personally, made hosting pilgrims impossible. When I asked about the meadow as an alternative, she told me that camping was not permitted there.

Memory plays trick, but my memory of the vision of an uncomfortable night in my tent that I still had no place to pitch that was dancing through my brain at that moment is very clear, not a huge deal, but not what I had been hoping for. Disappointed, tired, and (probably) discouraged, I thanked her and started to turn to leave. Then she said, and I paraphrase due to that tricky memory, eight beautiful words: “Don’t worry. I’ve got a bed for you.”

Music to my ears is far, far too small a term. Think orchestral music being played by a group of angels. Since I took few pictures there, the pictures of the bar and bunkroom were captured from Google rather than my phone.

It is possible that I had misunderstood what the woman had intended to say about the Spanish government’s COVID restrictions making it impossible for her to host those in need of a bunk because I was not the only peregrino who spent that night at the Izarbide hostel. There were only a few of us, but I was definitely not alone.

Memory plays tricks and using a photo from Google makes those tricks more likely. And when memory says that there were two bunkrooms, one for men and one for women, some mistakes are very likely. With those caveats in place, I slept very, very well that night in the lower bunk next to the far wall in the picture on the left.

The hostel’s services included an excellent dinner. My memory is less clear about breakfast and a box lunch for the next day as I was more than slightly confused by the list of options my hostess offered and my memory is very fuzzy about what the extras included. I opted to include all of them and my recollection that doing so worked out very well is quite clear.

In any event, I celebrated having a nice place to spend the night with a a glass of red wine, vino tinto.